One seldom encounters a law review article today of the type so common ten years ago, in which the writer starts with an inquiry into the "nature" of some legal concept and ends by deducing all sorts of important consequences from the supposed inner nature of the concept,-without more than a passing reference to the practical effects of his conclusions, and then with an air of condescension, as if to compliment the facts for showing good judgment in conforming to his theories. 1 A total failure

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... in any one of these eight directions does not simply result in a bad system of law; it results in something that is not properly called a legal system at all, except perhaps in the Pickwickian sense in which a void contract can still be said to be one kind of contract. 2 5 RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CoNTRAcrs § 90 (1979) .